The Bishop Writes

(From the Jan. 15, 1998 edition of the Inland Register)

The first two priests in the State of Washington were ordained at Fort Walla Walla on Jan. 2, 1848. Their names were Fathers Eugene Chirouse and Charles Pandosy, both Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

Bishop Blanchet, the newly appointed bishop of the Diocese of Walla Walla, had requested that Bishop Mazenod (the founder of the Oblates and recently canonized a saint) send him some Oblates for missionary work in the newly established diocese. The two seminarians traveled from Marseilles in France to New York, then to Montreal to meet Bishop Blanchet. They missed him by a few days as he had already left for St. Louis, thinking they would not arrive soon.

Chirouse and Pandosy caught up with the bishop before the wagon train left for the Walla Walla country. The account of their travels on the Oregon trail is very interesting under rather harsh conditions which were probably normal for those traveling on the trail. The wagon train was never attacked by the indigenous people of the areas through which they traveled. Some surmised that good fortune was due to the presence of the "blackrobes," as the priests were called in those days.

Bishop Blanchet was so excited to reach the new territory that he left the wagon train at Fort Hall in early August of 1947 with a small group and reached Fort Walla Walla on Sept. 4. The seminarians arrived exactly a month later. William McBean, a Catholic, was the factor (chief clerk) at Fort Walla Walla and helped the bishop and his companions get settled.

The atmosphere surrounding the fort was tense since hundreds of Indians had died from measles and small pox. The tragic massacre of Dr. Marcus Whitman, a Presbyterian missionary, along with his wife and eleven others occurred on Nov. 29.

Bishop Blanchet made the decision to ordain the two seminarians to the priesthood on Jan. 2. The ordination took place in the chapel (which also served as dining room, recreation hall, and dormitory) in the fort at 5 a.m. so the bishop wouldn't miss the Hudson Bay boats heading down the Columbia River. There weren't enough albs to go around, so for Eugene Chirouse they modified a simple dress of Madam McBean.

As the bishop headed downriver, the two new priests resumed their missionary work amongst the Yakamas with missions established near the mouth of the Yakima River (in the Tri-Cities area), Ellensburg, and in the Ahtanum area west of present-day Yakima.

With the increase of the number of whites in the Northwest, tensions increased. Father Pandosy became a friend of the Indians and tried to act as mediator between them and the whites. Although his presence amongst the Yakamas did not immediately produce a lot of converts, he tried to keep the peace. He became a close friend of Chief Kamiakin.

In 1857, while he was residing at St. Joseph Mission at Ahtanum, a group of soldiers came to the mission. The priests weren't there, but their garden had plenty of vegetables. The soldiers helped themselves. Almost immediately the troops discovered a half-keg of gunpowder while digging up potatoes. In anger they burned the mission to the ground, presuming the priests were passing on gunpowder to the Indians. In 1985 while I was still bishop of Yakima, we celebrated a reconciliation service at the Ahtanum mission. The Army expressed regret about the destruction of the mission.

Father Pandosy couldn't return to the mission so he spent the winter of 1856-57 at St. Paul Mission with the Jesuit, Father Joseph Joset, near Kettle Falls. The next summer he worked with Col. George Wright as a peacemaker, interpreter, and chaplain to the troops in the Yakima area. Wright was replaced by another commander less friendly to Father Pandosy so once again he had to leave. He moved in with the Jesuits at the Cataldo mission and then on to the Colville mission, where he remained until 1858.

His superiors ordered him to begin a mission in the Okanogan which he established near present-day Kelowna in 1859. He served there until 1891 when he received word from a Similkameen to come to Keremeos in a snow storm. He became very ill, returned to Penticton, and died there on Feb. 6, 1891, probably of pneumonia.

In the mid 1980s, I received a phone call from Bishop Emmet Doyle, then Bishop of Nelson, B.C., who told me that on the last day of an historical dig in the Kelowna area, the University of British Columbia had discovered the grave of Father Pandosy. Father Pandosy was known to be a very big man, and a rosary, characteristic of the habit of the Oblates, was found next to his body. A year ago last summer, Msgr. Perron Auve and Father Ron Patnode, priests of the Diocese of Yakima, and I found the grave of Father Pandosy in the middle of a farmer's field, just a few hundred yards from the mission of the Oblates. The former mission is now a provincial park in the outskirts of Kelowna, B.C. We offered a prayer at the grave, grateful for the missionary spirit of this man who strove to be a peacemaker and brother in Christ to all. All of us could do well to imitate that same spirit in 1998 as the Lord continues to use each of us as instruments of living and sharing the Good News.

May God bless you and give you peace.

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